By Paul Robinson, The Age, 23 July 2001.
Australians are developing more positive attitudes to trade unions
with more now committed to joining a union compared with two years
ago. This follows years of sharply declining union membership, which
fell from about 45 per cent of workers in the 1980s to about 24 per
cent today. That trend was reversed earlier this year when more than
25,000 new members, almost all women, were logged by the Australian
Bureau of Statistics.